Failure to tackle the online abuse of journalists before it’s too late could lead to someone being killed, two high-profile names have warned.
News organisations were told they must not wait for a death to act as a “wake-up call” during a panel on journalists’ safety at the Society of Editors Media Freedom Conference in London on Tuesday.
Carole Cadwalladr, the long-time Observer journalist who won awards for exposing the harvesting of millions of Facebook users’ data by the now-defunct Cambridge Analytica, recalled the feeling of “being trapped in a washing machine” that came with being in her own “cycle of abuse”.
Cadwalladr was personally sued for libel by Brexit donor and businessman Arron Banks over a statement made in her 2019 TED Talk, which she maintains was a repeat of words she had previously written in The Observer. She is currently taking an appeal over the £1m costs order she received to the European Court of Human Rights.
Cadwalladr said the combination of the legal case and the abuse she received online took a huge toll on her.
Cadwalladr told the conference: “In my case it became more than I could deal with, honestly, on a personal level. But I was really, really aware of, like, what if I had been a younger woman, what if I had been a woman of colour. It would have been so much profoundly worse.
“My belief is that somebody, probably a woman, is going to be targeted in a way, highly sexualised, we know that deepfake porn is already being used against female journalists, and the amount of shame and embarrassment on somebody who’s already under stress – I do honestly think that we are going to have a death before we understand the gravity of this situation.”
Cadwalladr, who is was dropped as contract freelance by Tortoise following its Observer takeover, added: “If your news organisation does not have a safety officer or a chief security officer for your journalists, you’re failing as a news organisation because it is absolutely crucial to be able to do the job.”
Cadwalladr noted that the advice is often “just come offline” but this is “discriminatory” as she said it cedes online space to white men “who are the ones who are much less targeted” and diminishes someone’s reach as a journalist.
The Sun’s Jerome Starkey: ‘We don’t want to have that wake-up call’
Although Sun defence editor Jerome Starkey has put himself in physical danger for his job in locations like Afghanistan and Ukraine, and is currently working out how to stay safe after being put on a Russian wanted list, he shared the view that online abuse puts people at risk.
Starkey said journalists who go into warzones undertake training, build experience and ultimately accept not zero risk, but “risks we can accept”.
“I think the challenge for us is that we learn lessons the hard way. We remember colleagues like Marie Colvin and Rupert Hamer who have been killed doing this job, and those are the lightning rod moments where we wake up and urgently consider” what change is needed.
Starkey continued: “The risk that someone is going to be killed because of online hate and rage and risk and threat, we don’t want to have that wake-up call, we need to try and learn that lesson now.”
Starkey encouraged news organisations to “be collegiate and collaborate” on these issues.
He said that the industry is “quite good” at collaborating on safety in warzones but “less experienced at cooperating on these lawfare threats to journalists and journalism.
“Perhaps when one organisation or one individual is attacked, we need to recognise that that is perhaps as threatening to us as an industry as when a journalist is killed or maimed in conflict.”
Rebecca Whittington of Reach, who became the UK news industry’s first online safety editor in 2021, said there has been an uptick in online safety reports sent to her by staff of 60% in 2025 so far compared to a year earlier.
[Read more: Reach journalist targeted by online abuse shares story as part of new police campaign]
She said there is “much more backlash from the general public” and that a lot of it comes from the grassroots. She cited an incident last week in which a journalist was initially barred by members of the public from entering a coroner’s courtroom to cover an inquest and then intimidated once they were inside.
Catalina Cortés, acting emergencies director at the Committee to Protect Journalists, told the panel that news organisations “need to understand they have to invest in safety… because if they don’t do that, they will be in a scenario where journalists are not able to do their jobs”.
She acknowledged it is expensive but said there are organisations that can help provide resources such as risk assessments as a first step.
Speaker of the House of Commons Lindsay Hoyle shared his own concerns for journalists’ safety earlier in the day in a keynote address, comparing it to threats towards politicians and drawing on the murders of MPs Jo Cox in 2016 and David Amess in 2021.
“We’ve all read about the death threats faced by women journalists just for covering an inquest, just for doing their jobs,” he said.
“Just as MPs should be able to go about their business free from threats and intimidation, so should you. Just as MPs have a police liaison officer when they need protection, so should you.”
Hoyle added: “I will forever defend your right to free speech and to do what you do safely and without interference.”
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